Created by TDT Affiliate Artist Aisha Sasha John
February 19-22, 2025 Daytime presentations open to the public
March 5-8, 2025 Evening presentations open to the public
Pay-What-You-Can
Location: Winchester Street Theatre
TDT presents a new performance project led by Affiliate Artist Aisha Sasha John featuring the company ensemble, The Pool. Across three distinct suites, The Pool celebrates the patterns that emerge in a group body as its individual members perform varying qualities and degrees of agency. The first suite is inspired by the movement patterns of groups of animals – pods, herds, schools, shoals. The second suite dances relationality, investigating the border between listening and expressing, hearing and heeding. In the third and final suite, percussion, juxtaposition and reflection create a foundation for the most beautiful breathing.
Aisha Sasha John is interested in the power of reception as creative methodology and in choreographing performances that occasion real love. John is the 2023-2025 Toronto Dance Theatre Affiliate Artist. Her duet with Devon Snell, DIANA ROSS DREAM (Danse-cité 2022), was developed during a 2019-2022 Dancemakers choreographic residency. Her first full-length solo work debuted as the aisha of oz at the Whitney Museum in 2017, and in 2018, iterations of the aisha of oz were presented at MAI and Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival. From 2015-2017, John choreographed, performed and curated as a member of the collective WIVES, presenting ACTION MOVIE at La Chapelle (2017). John’s video work and text art have been exhibited in galleries (Doris McCarthy, Oakville Galleries). A celebrated poet, John is the author of the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize nominated collection, I have to live. (McClelland & Stewart 2017), THOU (Book*hug 2014), and TO STAND AT A PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED (UDP 2021). Her fourth collection, total, will be published in spring 2025.